In five days, Mo’ne Davis went from a statistical footnote in Little League history to the title character in the most captivating U.S. sports story of the summer – maybe the entire year.

The 18th girl to play in the Little League WorldSeries now is the first active Little Leaguer to make the cover of Sports Illustrated. She has been talked about on network TV newscasts and NPR, made the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer six straight days and been featured in the New York Times sports section three times since pitching a two-hit shutout in her Little League World Series debut Friday.

That sports fans around the country suddenly can cite chapter and verse about the 13-year-old from Philadelphia owes to the power of ESPN. The network and its 47,000 platforms set the agenda for the nation’s sports discussions, and ESPN relentlessly promoted her scheduled appearance as the starting pitcher for the Mid-Atlantic champion Taney Dragons in Wednesday night’s game against the West champions from Las Vegas.

After complete game shutouts in her previous two starts, one to win the regional final, Davis would pitch just 2 1/3 innings, allowing six hits and three earned runs, striking out six and trailing 3-0 when she left a game her team lost 8-1. By taking her out then, with Little League pitch limits in mind, the Philadelphia manager kept Davis eligible to pitch Saturday’s U.S. Championship game should Taney beat Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West in an elimination game Thursday night.

Davis’ celebrity nevertheless developed mostly organically and justifiably, based on how masterfully and overpoweringly she pitched last week. She became the first girl to throw a Little League World Series shutout when she was still essentially anonymous.

Yet it is impossible to avoid the feeling that, like many female athletes in team sports, the legitimacy of her achievements is not intrinsic but owes to her having done it against boys, that girls and women are rarely appreciated for their greatness in competition against their own gender.

"We have made strides for female athletes in team sports and their acceptance," two-time Olympic soccer champion Julie Foudy wrote in an email. "Having said that, we will always be compared to how we would fare against men. That is just the reality, good or bad. . .But why this story is gaining such traction, of course. is because it is a girl who has entered a male-dominated game and, in fact, dominated."

Olympic softball champion Jessica Mendoza, past president of the Women's Sports Foundation, agreed that attitudes have changed - but only to a degree.

"There are still great female athletes who are accepted on their own terms - and we are light years from the days of Billie Jean King having to beat Bobby Riggs to get respect - but they are still few and far between true athletic accomplishments getting recognized on the stage they deserve," Mendoza said in an email.

"Mo'ne deserves all the attention she is getting, but my fear is the message we are sending young girls is that for the masses to recognize a dominant performance (or performances), you've got to beat the boys."

But this can be viewed it through another prism: Mo’ne (pronounced Moh-nay) Davis has pitched the old schoolyard taunt, “You throw like a girl,” back in the faces of those who use that putdown of girls to be critical of boys.

That makes Davis an empowering figure, quite a position for a girl about to begin eighth grade. That she is an African-American girl in a sport where African-American participation has declined precipitously adds to her being seen as an inspirational figure, in the same way as the all African-American boys on Chicago’s Jackie Robinson West team in the World Series.

Holly Swyers, associate professor of anthropology at Lake Forest College and author of “Wrigley Regulars,” which studied community in the bleachers, said Davis has made the most of a spotlight that always shines on the mound.

"As a pitcher, her performance is highly visible; a position player might have excellent defense or be a home run threat, but their moments of glory are more fleeting relative to a pitcher like Davis who takes command of a game," Swyers wrote in an email. "So here we have a young woman in a high profile position, dominating a field where our culture says women are not supposed to succeed."

Marquis Jackson, a relief pitching closer for Jackie Robinson West, has been as impressive as Davis in the regionals and the World Series: five games, 7.2 innings pitched, 23 batters faced, 20 strikeouts, two hits and one run allowed.

ESPN has duly noted Jackson’s excellence, but it ends there. He is just another outstanding player, not the newest national media phenomenon in an age when social media lets millions contribute to building any phenomenon.

How pervasive has her celebrity become? Davis was the first person students mentioned when University of Georgia professor Vicki Michaelis brought up the topic of women in sports Wednesday, and none of the 137 people in her class asked who that was.

"I think being a girl is 100 percent of the fascination," said Michaelis, a longtime sports journalist now director of the sports media program at the University of Georgia’s Grady College. "If she were playing in the Little League Softball World Series, she wouldn’t be taking social media by storm, be hounded by reporters and fans this week, and multiple media outlets wouldn’t be covering the tournament."

Could this all end as quickly as it started if Davis does not get to pitch again in the World Series after the offensively powerful Las Vegas hit her hard Wednesday night before an announced crowd of 34,123? Probably. But some of Davis’ appeal will linger because of the personality she has shown to the media the past few days.

She has deflected attention to her teammates, revealed a thorough knowledge of pitching and come up with pithy replies, including this one when asked about her pitching similarities to Dodgers’ star pitcher Clayton Kershaw, whom Davis challenged to a pitch-off:

Kershaw playfully responded he was prepared for the challenge whenever Davis made it to L.A. That may be sooner than later, given that Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show on ESPN cousin ABC is filmed in Hollywood.

Also sooner than later: people will debate how Davis might do against bigger, stronger boys in older levels of baseball. Some will be quick to belittle what Davis has done if she no longer can stand out (or hold her own) rather than give her credit for trying, should she choose to.

"I think most women would prefer to have their accomplishments recognized without the asterisk effect of saying `She did well … for a girl,'" Swyers wrote.

What Davis has said she most wants to accomplish is playing basketball for the University of Connecticut women, who won a record eight national championship in April. She clearly knows something about greatness.